


Puppet Show+Signs

by embarrassing old stuff from LJ pre-2015 (prevaricator)



Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: (anti-cyberpunk?) AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/embarrassing%20old%20stuff%20from%20LJ%20pre-2015
Summary: Koyama isn’t nearly pragmatic enough for what he’s doing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from LJ

**Title:** Puppet Show  
**Rating:** PG  
**Pairing:** Koyama/Yamapi  
**Warnings:** (anti-cyberpunk?) AU  
**Word Count:** 2505  
**Summary:** Koyama isn’t nearly pragmatic enough for what he’s doing.  
**Note:** For the mini-reel challenge at [](http://reel-johnny.livejournal.com/profile)[**reel_johnny**](http://reel-johnny.livejournal.com/) , inspired by OneRepublic's [All the right moves](http://youtu.be/qrOeGCJdZe4) MV. Thanks to [](http://sanjihan.livejournal.com/profile)[**sanjihan**](http://sanjihan.livejournal.com/) for putting up with my whining and looking it over. <3

The mask is hot and hard to breathe through, just like it had been at his first masquerade, but this time Koyama is grateful for it as he arrives at Yamapi’s place. It hides the pang of guilt he feels when Yamapi opens the door with a smile, mask in hand. He looks good in a tuxedo, as always.

“What, don’t I get a kiss before we go, Keisuke?” Yamapi asks.

Grimacing at the fake name and trying to keep his voice light and teasing, Koyama replies, “Patience is a virtue.”

In reality, they’ll probably never kiss again. After tonight, Koyama will have what he needs from Yamapi, and he thinks he might actually die of guilt if he stays.

Causing an accident could damage Yamapi’s nice-guy image, thereby hurting his acting career, so his mask stays off as they get in his car—Thought-Enhancement Chips don’t give their users x-ray vision, and the masks are limiting. At least, that’s the reason Koyama would have assumed before they started dating. Now he’s pretty sure Yamapi just genuinely doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

Either way, it lets Koyama spend the entire ride guiltily studying Yamapi’s face. Even after six months of dating, he has a hard time distinguishing when Yamapi is focused on his TEC and when he’s just spaced out.

It’s strange now to think that he’d chosen Yamapi in part because he didn’t think he could get attached to someone so coolly expressionless, and stranger still to think that a man known for hosting frequent masquerades really has no need for a physical mask.

Except around Koyama, who has unfortunately found Yamapi quite likeable.

He’s almost as relieved when Yamapi ties his mask on in the parking lot as he had been when he put on his own earlier, the creepy lack of facial features making it easier to pretend it’s someone else, not someone he’s using for his love of parties and connections to TEC service providers and politicians.

 

 

Koyama spends as much of the party avoiding Yamapi as he thinks he can afford. He wishes he could be anywhere but here, as his part in this whole thing was to get the band hired for this party. All he has left to do is to get Shige and Ryo back in tonight to remove the rest of their equipment.

Right now, it’s their turn to work. Koyama simply has to play dumb, which isn’t hard when his whole face is covered by a mask.

Once upon a time, Koyama had been enamored of these masquerade balls, where the wealthy gather with their TEC’s turned off to show off their ability to learn intricate sequence dances without the aid of computers. He’s since learned that, at least now, the majority of the participants are too afraid of embarrassing themselves to turn off the computers in their heads. The masks are just a way to hide the glazed expressions of people letting computers do their thinking for them.

And so they all go twirling around the room with perfect, precise steps guided by computers, decked out in finery from a variety of bygone European eras, with masks on their faces hiding their emotions, and all Koyama sees are robots. The idle chatter among them is the only evidence that they retain any humanity.

From time to time he passes Yamapi as they dance, but the unspoken rules keep the dance pairs male-female (ostensibly to keep up the medieval feel, more likely because the TEC dance programs get confused, otherwise). Tonight, it’s both a relief and a frustration—he feels like there’s something different about the way Yamapi carries himself in the dance, and it makes him curious. He’ll probably never know what it is.

Koyama is watching the band on a break from dancing when Yamapi finally tracks him down.

“They’re really good,” he says, nodding at the band.

Of course they are, Koyama thinks. Aside from Shige (who isn’t an actual member of the band but needed to be present), none rely on TEC to aid their music.

“It’s because they’re not perfect,” Koyama agrees, then winces. Way to make himself suspicious. He trails off. Yamapi looks at him, but the mask hides any emotion he might be feeling.

Yamapi fills the silence with, “The cellist is really passionate. That really does make a difference, doesn’t it?”

Surprised, Koyama turns to ask for clarification—Massu’s level of passion is something of a faux pas, these days—but a woman interrupts to ask Yamapi to dance.

He goes back to watching the band and thinks that “passionate” doesn’t even begin to describe Massu. Maybe Ryo, but when he watches Massu play, Koyama is always a little afraid his soul is going to fly out.

Tegoshi pauses to rest his violin on his knee and catches Koyama watching them. He grins and winks, and Koyama nods in response, laughing a little at how easily Tegoshi recognized him.

As the piece they’re playing draws to a close, Koyama realizes exactly which one it is.

A short woman in a yellow dress asks him to dance. She’s only wearing a columbina, leaving her mouth visible. Just from that he can tell who she is, an actress who’s been in dramas with Yamapi. He accepts with some trepidation, knowing exactly what’s going to happen thirty seconds after the dance starts.

He’s left his own TEC on so that he’ll notice when it happens, though he doesn’t really need it for this dance (he never had time to learn them all properly), because they deliberately chose a simpler one in the hopes of minimizing the utter chaos they know will ensue.

It starts off normally enough, dancers moving precisely in pairs and Koyama making small talk with his partner. But then, suddenly, there’s the faintest hint of a strange whining noise as the computers Shige and Ryo had set up the night before kick in, and everyone’s TEC’s shut off.

There’s a second where Koyama feels sheer relief at the buzzing in his head quieting, and then people start falling all over each other.

It isn’t quite as bad as they’d expected, which Koyama chalks up to muscle memory. Intriguingly, his own partner doesn’t react at all until another couple runs into them, and her voice sounds completely sincere when she asks the couple if something’s wrong.

A potential ally or a skilled actress? Koyama wishes he could ask.

Five seconds is all it takes for the computers to get all the information they need before they stop running interference. It takes a few more for the dancers to collect themselves, filling the room with awkward laughter while they snap back into position like marionettes.

Yamapi is staring at Koyama from across the room. Koyama notices and misses a step, and his partner laughs.

“What’s gotten into everyone today, I wonder?” She asks.

Koyama apologizes. “I got distracted.”

 

 

Yamapi says nothing of the incident on the way home, but his face is oddly blank. He kisses Koyama and invites him in for a drink, though Koyama has already told him he’s meeting up with “college friends” later.

“Sorry,” Koyama says, apologizing for a whole lot more than not sticking around. He moves in for one last kiss, almost starts crying when he has to pull away.

He goes home, changes, and takes a nap to pass the time.

At five in the morning, he picks up Ryo and Shige and drives back to the dance hall. They tell the guard at the parking lot gate that they forgot something, and he lets them in, saying, “The door’s unlocked. You’re not the only ones who forgot things.”

Koyama’s heart jumps to his throat. They need to do this without being seen.

He opens the door with more than a little trepidation to find Yamapi sitting propped against the stage with his eyes closed. Cleaning bots whir around the floor around him.

“Oh, Koyama,” He looks up as Koyama and the others walk in. “So it was you.”

Koyama blinks and tries to look confused. “Huh? No, these two just forgot some thi-“

He pauses. Yamapi just called him Koyama. “Wait, Koyama?!”

“It’s Koyama Keiichirou, right?” Fuck. “You realize you went to high school with my best friend, don’t you?”

Ryo curses behind him. Koyama rather agrees with the sentiment.

“But Akanishi-kun’s out of the country,” he protests, weakly.

“And? He asked for a picture.”

Koyama doesn’t know what to do. Yamapi is alone, but the unknowing bots have cleaned the floor of all the patches that had run interference, meaning they can’t stop him from sending a TEC SOS. And now he knows Koyama’s name to report to the police.

He gets up from the floor and walks toward Koyama. “What did you do?”

Ryo tenses like he’s about to attack, but Shige stops him. “Wait.”

“Just tell me what you did.” He’s right in front of Koyama now, making it hard for Koyama to avoid meeting his eyes. “I won’t call the cops if you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

“We’re not,” Koyama says. He sighs, “You’re better off not knowing.”

Yamapi glares. “That’s for me to decide.”

Shige opens his mouth, but Koyama cuts him off. Shige could explain it better, maybe, but Koyama’s the one who’s been lying to Yamapi.

“We hacked their TEC’s.” Koyama says. “Well, they did.”

All he did was seduce Yamapi.

“Why?”

“To get TEC service providers’ account logins. It’s a lot easier to hack a TEC than their servers.”

And hacking a TEC isn’t easy.

Yamapi’s face darkens. “And what are you going to do with that?”

“We’re just going to take the TEC’s down for two days.”

“Whose TEC’s?”

“Everyone’s,” Ryo answers.

Comprehension dawns on Yamapi’s face. “You’re anti-TEC.”

“We prefer to be called ‘humanists,’” Ryo is taking over the talking, but Yamapi doesn’t look away from Koyama. “But yeah.”

Yamapi says nothing for a while, and Koyama waits on tenterhooks. Someone as phobic of being bored as Yamapi isn’t a likely ally.

So he’s surprised when he just asks if Koyama needs to help Ryo and Shige, and when the answer is no, lets them get to work and drags him to the other side of the room to talk.

“How long have you known?” Koyama asks, leaning against the wall.

“Two months.”

Gaping, Koyama meets his eyes for the first time that morning. “Why didn’t you break up with me?”

“I like you,” he says, and Koyama winces. “And you seemed harmless enough.”

There’s a brief pause in which Koyama feels a fresh wave of guilt pour in.

It’s Yamapi who breaks the silence again. “So why just one day? If you’re anti-TEC, shouldn’t you want to do it for as long as you can?”

“We’re not really anti-TEC,” Koyama explains. “Not exactly. What people want to do in their own time is up to them, and it has its benefits.”

“What bothers us is that it’s required for most jobs. You’re not allowed to think on your own, even if you want to, because a TEC thinks faster. It has better analytical skills. So you’re wasting the company’s time if you try to think yourself. In the end, they hire you to sit around while your TEC works.”

That shouldn’t be news to anyone, but it’s hard to tell with Yamapi. Actors don’t suffer from this problem, as TEC-aided acting is the stuff of comedies.

“It’s really boring,” he continues. “Your brain gets all mushy and you stop feeling human after a while. And you can only chat with your friends and read blogs for so long before you run out of things to say and read.”

“Even you?” Yamapi smiles for a moment. Then he frowns and turns to rest his arms on the wall on either side of Koyama, leaving him no room to look away, and asks, “How much of it was a lie?”

“The name,” Koyama says. “That’s about it. And I wasn’t always a waiter. I had a desk job for a while.”

He stops. He’s about to confess to something that wasn’t a lie, or wouldn’t have been if he’d ever said it, but before he can get up the nerve, Yamapi kisses him.

Not sure what it means, he wraps his arms around Yamapi’s waist and kisses back hopefully.

“Does this mean you’re not breaking up with me?” he asks when Yamapi pulls away.

Yamapi hesitates. “I’m not sure yet.”

It’s more than Koyama thought he’d get. He tries to smile.

There’s a cough in the background, and they look up to find Ryo and Shige staring at them, looking unimpressed and uncomfortable, respectively.

“Are you done?” Ryo asks. “We need to get out of here.”

Oh, right. Koyama lets go of Yamapi and pulls himself away from the wall. A hand grabs his arm.

“Take me with you,” Yamapi says.

Koyama shares an uneasy look with Ryo and Shige.

Ryo speaks first. “He already knows enough to get us arrested, how much worse can it get?”

“A lot,” Shige says. “He could get Massu and Tegoshi arrested, too. And then we’d be stuck in prison with them.”

A look of horror crosses Ryo’s face, followed by an irritated one. “Screw that. If I’m going to jail, they better be going, too.”

Koyama smiles.

“But you do realize,” Shige looks at Yamapi, “that if you get involved, you could end up in prison, too?”

“Or it could cause a scandal,” Koyama adds.

None of this dissuades Yamapi, so they let him tag along to Tegoshi’s place. They don’t ask why he’s so interested, but Koyama figures it doesn’t really matter. Stranger things have happened. Like Tegoshi, he thinks, as Tegoshi lets them in, so caught up in doing something on the Internet with his TEC that he doesn’t even notice the extra person until ten minutes later.

He spends the time while Massu cooks breakfast and everyone else works telling Yamapi how they formed as a group and as much as he knows about why three people good enough at hacking to do this would even want to do it. He also talks about how relieved he felt, the first time he shut off his TEC after months of using it endlessly for work, how he realized it had even been affecting his opinions.

 

 

 

In order to get the kind of complete shutdown they want, Ryo has told Koyama, every TEC in the country has to be infected with a time-bomb virus so that it can’t continue to do offline processes when its network connection goes down. The work involved in getting this virus distributed takes quite a while, so the actual shutdown doesn’t happen until weeks later.

They start in the morning, at the beginning of the usual workday. Koyama throws alibis to the wind and takes a few days off to take a road trip with Yamapi, hoping the trip will distract him enough to give the silence a chance.

 

~FIN~  


**Title:** Signs  
**Rating:** PG  
**Pairing:** Koyama/Tegoshi  
**Warnings:** AU  
**Word Count:** 1565  
**Summary:** Koyama’s not about to let a window get in his way.  
**Note:** For the mini-reel challenge at [](http://reel-johnny.livejournal.com/profile)[**reel_johnny**](http://reel-johnny.livejournal.com/) , based on K.Will's [My Heart Beating MV](). Again, thanks to [](http://sanjihan.livejournal.com/profile)[**sanjihan**](http://sanjihan.livejournal.com/) for looking it over.

  
The waiter is small and slim, with wide eyes and a petite mouth, but broad, athletic shoulders. He’s staring out the window of the café across the way and one story up from Koyama’s gym, straight at Koyama.

It’s more of a leer than a stare, Koyama thinks when he notices. When Koyama catches his eye, the waiter licks his lips and gives him an exaggerated wink, tapping a hand against his upper arm, then pointing it at Koyama and giving a thumbs up. The look, overall, is outrageous.

It goes well with the long, curly blond wig, girly makeup, and maid costume the boy is wearing. If it weren’t for the broad shoulders and the fact that Fridays are “Maid Friday” at the butler café across the way, Koyama may have mistaken him for a girl.

Still, he’s cute, and Koyama is weak to flattery. He waves and flexes, earning another thumbs up. Then, on a whim, he signs, “Hi, I’m Koyama. What’s your name?”

But the boy just tips his head and makes a confused face. Koyama sighs and waves it off, smiling. After flashing a smile in return, the boy turns and goes back to work.

Koyama goes back to the gym the next day, even though he doesn’t normally go on Saturdays. He takes a spot in front of the same window, but the waiter never appears.

He’s there on Monday, however, this time in more normal café waiter attire. Koyama is pleased to note that the boy is even prettier sans makeup, though he has something of an awful perm.

This time, the boy waves and hesitantly signs, “Hi, I’m Tegoshi.”

Tegoshi. It’s an odd name. Wondering if he’d learned the signs wrong, Koyama signs back slowly, “Tegoshi?”

The boy grins and nods. “Tegoshi.”

Well, then. “I’m Koyama. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you.” The boy grins again, looking quite proud of himself, then waves and gets back to work. He stops to wave a few more times that evening before Koyama goes home. Koyama tries to ask how old he is, but just gets another confused look.

 

 

Koyama is in love. Further sign language conversations have been stilted and rushed, but he now knows that Tegoshi is 23 and likes to play soccer.

Shige laughs at him about it. “You’re in love with a guy you’ve only seen through a window, and all you know is his name, age, and hobby, and that his part-time job involves a lot of sweet-talking girls?”

Koyama pouts at him.

“Well, I guess he must like you back if he’s learning sign language just to talk to you,” Shige continues. “You must be made for each other.”

The last sentence is a bit too snide for Koyama’s liking, so he kicks Shige under the table.

“He wouldn’t give me his phone number, though.”

Koyama deflates at the memory. He’s pretty sure that Tegoshi misunderstood and thought he wanted to call that minute, while Tegoshi was at work. He hasn’t stopped coming to the window to greet Koyama since that event, though, so maybe it isn’t a lost cause.

If only it weren’t a butler café, Koyama would just stop by. But it is, and Koyama is a guy. Worse, he’s just begun a job as a reporter. He resigns himself to asking Tegoshi to meet him when he gets off work, the next time they see each other.

Unsurprisingly, the question is beyond Tegoshi’s still-shaky sign language comprehension. There’s nothing he can do but wait for Friday, by which time Tegoshi will have decoded the message.

 

 

When he gets a call from work on Thursday night, telling him he’s being sent on a trip to Ogasawara the next morning, he’s frustrated. He’s even more frustrated to learn that he’s not going to be back until Wednesday.

He spends the beginning of the twenty-five hour boat ride wondering if Tegoshi will agree to meet him after work next time, and if Tegoshi missed him today. Kept awake by his frustration at missing his chance today, he makes his way to the deck of the boat and stares in awe.

Back in grade school, he remembers being told that the light pollution in the city makes it hard to see the stars. That had been a huge understatement, he discovers. He’d seen the stars from the mountains, but even that must have been too near the city lights. Now the sky looks almost uncomfortably crowded.

The next few days are a constant succession of wonder. He sees dolphins and whales, and turtles laying eggs on the beach at night. By the end of the trip, the only thing that keeps him from being completely depressed about going back to Tokyo, with its crowds and pollution, is the prospect of getting an answer from Tegoshi.

After the long boat ride back he’s tired, but he heads to the gym, disoriented enough from the trip that he’s forgotten it’s still Wednesday. It takes twenty minutes of staring up at the window across the way for him to realize his mistake.

But when it’s finally Friday, he still doesn’t see Tegoshi. At first he’s just frustrated, assuming Tegoshi got sick with really bad timing.

Monday, there’s still no Tegoshi in the café window. Thinking maybe he’d switched shifts, Koyama goes to the gym Tuesday, too. Again, there’s no Tegoshi.

He goes every night that week, but doesn’t see Tegoshi once. By Sunday he’s sore all over and quite disappointed.

Shige laughs at him on the phone, but he brings Koyama ice cream, anyway.

Koyama tries to get him to go to the café and ask after Tegoshi. Shige tells him to do it himself.

“But I have a reputation to uphold!”

“You’re a reporter, not a celebrity,” Shige growls. “And it would be creepy for me to do it.”

 

 

As he goes longer and longer without a single glimpse of Tegoshi, Koyama is increasingly tempted to go over and ask about him. But then he gets a call from Shige.

“I was at your butler café today,” he says. “For an article. I asked about Tegoshi, but the manager says he left a few weeks ago. Said he’d gotten a new job, but whenever anyone asked where, he’d just laugh and say they’d find out in a few months.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Koyama groans.

“I don’t know. They said he seemed really happy about it. Maybe he got scouted for a TV show or something.”

 

 

Months later, Koyama knows the cast list of every single new show to come on TV, as well as every upcoming movie, and there isn’t a single Tegoshi anywhere on any of them. His friends keep trying to set him up on dates to distract him.

 

 

In early January, two weeks after the New Year celebrations have drawn to a close, his boss comes to his desk.

“You’re collaborating with the sports department on a special on the new members of the Yokohama F. Marinos,” his boss says.

Koyama blinks. “Soccer players? Why?”

It’s not really within his corner’s usual theme of reporting on hard-working average people, though he’s sure soccer players work hard.

“Masuda said one of the new players asked if you could do a story on them. And people are still excited from the end of the season, so we thought we might as well. It might attract new viewers.”

Koyama perks up at that. He has a fan! He doesn’t get many of those.

Masuda is a short sports reporter with an adorable smile that has boosted female viewership of their sports corner to new highs. He meets with Koyama a day ahead of time to plan and go over what they can find of the players’ background information.

Koyama stares at the list of names Masuda hands him. Then he rubs his eyes and stares again. He laughs in disbelief.

“Hey, I heard someone on the team asked for me to do this?” he ventures.

Masuda blinks. “Yeah. Tegoshi, I think it was. He’s pretty good. Kinda full of himself, though.”

“Do you know him?” Masuda adds, probably wondering about the silly grin on Koyama’s face.

 

 

The next day, he’s barely made it onto the field when a pair of hands slips over his eyes.

“Guess who?” says an unfamiliar but somehow entirely appropriate voice, young and teasing.

“Tegoshi Yuya,” Koyama says, as the hands start to drag him somewhere. He goes along with it.

“Aww, you cheated. You weren’t supposed to know!” Tegoshi laughs, letting go.

Koyama blinks and looks around. They’re under the stands, out of sight from everyone else.

“It’s my job to—“ he starts, but he’s interrupted by Tegoshi grabbing his shoulders and tugging. He bends down a little, and is rewarded with Tegoshi’s lips on his. It’s sort of unprofessional, maybe, but Koyama wraps his arms around Tegoshi’s waist to support him and kisses back, just for a minute, before people come looking.

As they sneak back out onto the field, Tegoshi slips Koyama a folded-up piece of paper, telling him to open it later. Koyama forgets about it until that night, when he gets home and realizes he never got Tegoshi’s number.

Hoping it will have contact information, he slips the paper out of his pocket and unfolds it to find a row of patterned dots.  



End file.
